Read Online 50 Reasons to Say Goodbye by Nick Alexander - Free Book Online Page B

he says aggressively. “Didn’t you say FedEx?”
    I nod. “Sure did.”
    He smiles at me, frowns at the same time. He opens the palms of his hands towards me as if to say,
So? What’s the score?
    He has put on a lot of weight since I last saw him; he’s grown a beard and gained a pair of glasses as well. He looks very ordinary; very middle America. I sigh; let the accent drop.
    â€œDirk?” I whine. “Don’t you recognise me at all?”
    A smile of recognition ripples across his face. His mouth opens into a smile of amazement. “Mark?” He opens the door, looks at me with lunatic eyes. “What the hell?”
    I shrug. “I was in your neighbourhood.”
    He opens the door wide, pulls me in. “That is so cool!” he says. “I mean, how did you find me, and how come you’re in L.A., and what’s with the suit? Jees! Come up, come up … God I’m sorry!”
    The apartment is far better than the anonymous grey-faced building suggests. Maybe a thousand square feet, divided up with half height walls into living, dining, kitchen, and sleeping areas. The walls are white or deep Bordeaux red. A comfortable jumble of books and magazines covers every surface.
    â€œSorry about the, erh,” he says, removing Psychology Today from the sofa.
    I smile. “I’m not likely to complain. You remember my place!”
    He grins at me, visibly relaxing. “I do!” he says.
    I hang my jacket over the chair back. He slumps onthe sofa. He’s wearing baggy half-length shorts and an oversize sweatshirt. His added weight seems to make him even taller, his legs even huger. “So! You’re here with your job then?”
    I look him over with a critical eye, think,
“He’s not so cute.”
I loosen my tie and roll my sleeves. I tell him about my job, about the clients, life in France, a couple of amusing boyfriend stories. He tells me he hasn’t been seeing anyone, not for years.
    â€œI feel like I’ve been crossing the desert,” he says. “Still, I have to get to the other side at some point, right?”
    I smile. “Or at least to an oasis,” I say.
    We talk for nearly two hours. We drink so much coffee my hands start to shake. We arrange to spend Saturday together.
    â€œMy turn to show
you
around,” says Dirk.
    His car is a huge lolloping rust-coloured saloon. We shuffle along in a series of traffic jams towards Sunset Boulevard. In my head I see the cover of a Don Henley album: palm trees and sunsets and magic.
    The reality – a grimy street with no architectural cohesion and a beggar at every set of lights reminds me more of a European industrial zone than a city of angels.
    â€œThe problem with L.A.,” explains Dirk, “is that there’s nothing to actually
see
, well, except for smog and bag-ladies. The rest is just myth. America’s finest, but myth all the same.”
    He points out the church where Bing Crosby got married, Judy Garland’s school, the Charlie Chaplin studios. I nod, try to sound excited, but the overriding experience is of sitting in a traffic jam. Dirk takes me up past immaculate lawns to see the Hollywood sign. It too, is better when set to music beneath a pink sunset; today it just looks like a shabby set of letters plonked on a hill.
    â€œWhen they legalised Marijuana some jokerschanged it to Hollyweed,” Dirk tells me.
    We lean on the railings side by side. We look at the buildings rising above the smog.
    â€œYou get great sunsets here though,” he says, “what with the pollution and all.”
    A tiny breeze blows his blond mop into his eyes. Our arms touch slightly.
    I say, “Don’t you ever regret Europe, or anywhere else for that matter? Places with clean air, calm …”
    Dirk stares out over the city. “I regret loads of stuff,” he says. “But mainly people, not so much places.”
    His deep voice